Monday, April 17, 2017

Lauren Cargill - Can Dubai become the world's happiest city?

Summary: Dubai has set a challenge for it's self: to become the happiest city in the world. In order to meet this goal, they have set up Happiness Meters throughout the city. Citizens can go up the the meters and choose an emoji to represent their mood, sad, neutral, or happy. They take this data to find the Happiness Index for the whole city. The meters were created by Smart Dubai, a government-funded agency with the task of turning Dubai into a technologically smart city. "In order to become the happiest city, we knew we would need a way to listen to everyone in the city, and understand their current levels of happiness with city services," Dr. Aisha Bin Bishr, director general of Smart Dubai, told CNN. Currently, 6 million people have voted and the city has a score of 90% happiness. In the years to come, the United Arab Emirates hopes to become the happiest nation in the world.

Analysis: I think that this is a really good idea. It is a simple way for people to be able to express to the government how they feel. Many people have expressed a dislike for this, because they don't think the government should have a say in people's emotions. While I agree people should be able to think for themselves, I don't think that the happiness meters are trying to control emotions. I think that they are only trying to find out what people are feeling. If they find that many people are feeling unhappy, they can evaluate themselves and figure out if they are doing something to cause it. This could relate to the United States policy of isolationism, where they focused on their own issues and reflected on themselves.

Article: http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/14/travel/dubai-happiest-city/?iid=ob_homepage_deskrecommended_pool

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